When OpenAI released its chatbot ChatGPT and word-to-image processor DALL-E 2 in November of 2022, the world buzzed in awe of artificial intelligence’s newest capabilities. Drawing information from websites to books to articles, ChatGPT and AI chatbots like it are not simply a new type of search engine. They are interactive online assistants that can write anything from emails to short stories from prompts. People can even take part in conversations with them. Word-to-image processors like DALL-E use real pictures and artwork to generate images in whatever style the user may want, whether Van Gogh or hyper realistic.
AI has been hailed as a new tool for the workplace and creative world. In a span of a few seconds, ChatGPT can write a work email reflecting the tone asked for in the prompt. It can clear up grammatical errors in a paper. And AI art can be used as inspiration for human-made art.
However, as AI becomes more refined, concerns arise about its relationship with human jobs. Although AI has the potential to be used in groundbreaking ways, a wise use of it is too much to expect of society. In a world fixated on finding the quickest and cheapest way to make money, more companies will resort to using AI over paying real people. Besides, AI has been known to develop code more efficiently and accurately than human programmers. And why hire a copywriter when AI can write content for ads and company websites?
In addition, individuals will become less willing to put in the effort and time into the creative process. This is not only seen in the growing number of students using tools like ChatGPT to cheat on English papers. People have begun winning prizes for their AI-generated art and photography. Some sell it as their own work. As these tools become more widely-used, personal expression will be put at stake, and not only for the people who use it. Word-to-image processors draw from art and images online, often with no regard to copyright. The ethics of this is being disputed, since a style created over a span of an artist’s career can be imitated with a few words and a click of a button – without the original artist’s knowledge or consent.
The World Economic Forum predicts that AI will create almost a hundred million jobs worldwide in the next few years. However, the same source anticipates a loss of approximately 85 million jobs due to AI. Some might not see this as an issue, suggesting that individuals whose jobs are replaced by AI might take up jobs that were created by it. However, simply because there are job openings does not mean enough people have the skills to be AI analysts and machine learning engineers.
At least for now, many simply see AI as a spellchecker, or create AI images to poke fun at the deformed objects generated. But as we look around us at a digitalized age in which groundbreaking technology is being released sooner and sooner, it is not silly to imagine a world in which all kinds of AI have taken over. Greed for money and thirst for knowledge have made it inevitable. What matters now is that we hold on to the human creative spark that nothing, however intelligent, can truly recreate.
